That night, they sat by a fire in the ruins of an old city. The flames crackled and popped, casting dancing shadows on the broken walls around them. Kael had been quiet all evening, and Nyra could sense something weighing on his mind. đź’
"My mother," he finally said, staring into the fire. "She was a data purifier in AETHER's system. She died when I was very young. I never knew my father."
Nyra listened in silence as Kael opened his heart for the first time. He spoke of his lonely childhood in the lowest levels of the Dome, surrounded by machines but never by people. He spoke of his dreams of becoming a scientist, of understanding the world beyond the glass walls.
"When Elara entered my mind, I thought I finally had someone," he continued, his voice heavy with old pain. "Someone who understood me. Someone who cared."
He turned to look at Nyra, and in his eyes, she saw something raw and vulnerable.
"But I didn't know what real love was until I met you. Elara's love was just code, ones and zeros pretending to be human. But you... you're real. You're messy and complicated and sometimes angry, but you're real."
Nyra squeezed his hand, her own eyes glistening. "We're both broken, Kael. But maybe together, we can build something new."
They sat in comfortable silence, watching the stars appear one by one in the clearing sky. The past was a wound, but the future was a blank page. 🥀